Pre-approved payments are the best type of payments to process as they easily increase cashflow and have a very low administrative effort to process. A pre-approval is active when your customer stores their debit/credit card or bank account on file with our system so we can securely store it for later use. When an invoice is due, we can debit your customer automatically on the due date.
Getting customers onto pre-approvals includes a couple of steps
- Setting up the email template to send
- Sending pre-approvals to your customers
- Receiving confirmation that a pre-approval is now active
Setting up the email template to send.
- Log into your Pinch account.
https://app.getpinch.com.au/account/login - Click on Account Settings from the left menu.
- Click on the Emails tab.
There are 2 types of email you can configure. The Pre-approval Request is the email you send to customers inviting them to store their payment details. Pre-approval Confirmation is the email we send to your customer when they confirm the pre-approval.
Although every business is different, our general advice for these templates is to include as much detail about the arrangement as possible. Also try to put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Maybe you issue lots of invoices and your customer currently spends lots of time manually paying them. For subscription based payments, having a regular Direct Debit ensures that a service is not interrupted.
You can also attach a PDF to the emails. This is also advised and most often contains terms and conditions or additional information about the service.
Sending pre-approval to your customers
- The Pre-Approval Request Subject is the email subject that will be used for emails sent from Pinch that invite your Customers to activate their Pre-Approval. Leave this blank for the default email subject to be used instead.
- The Pre-Approval Request Message is the email message content that will be used for emails sent from Pinch that invite your Customers to activate their Pre-Approval. This email message will be followed by a Pre-Approval signup link in the email that is sent to your Customers. Leave this blank for the default email message to be used instead.
- You can add a file to the Pre-Approval Request Attachment if you would like to include an attachment in the emails sent from Pinch that invite your Customers to activate their Pre-Approval. This might Terms & Conditions, a club roster, or even an order form (this is optional and can be left empty).
- The Pre-Approval Confirmation Subject is the email subject that will be used for emails sent from Pinch to your Customers confirming the successful activation their Pre-Approval. Leave this blank for the default email subject to be used instead.
- The Pre-Approval Request Message is the email message content that will be used for emails sent from Pinch to your Customers confirming the successful activation their Pre-Approval. This email message will be followed by a Pre-Approval update link in the email that is sent to your Customers where they can update their details in the future. Leave this blank for the default email message to be used instead.
- You can add a file to the Pre-Approval Request Attachment if you would like to include an attachment in the emails sent from Pinch that confirm the successful activation of your Customers Pre-Approval. This might Terms & Conditions, a club roster, or even an order form (this is optional and can be left empty).
Sending pre-approval to your Customers.
From the main Pinch menu,
- Click on "Customers"
- Click on "Manage Pre-approvals".
From this page, select the customers and we'll send out the email you configured in step
Note that we require an email address from each customer. If you need to update their details, use your accounting system and the data will automatically flow down to Pinch.
Receiving confirmation that a pre-approval is now active
Congratulations! When you receive confirmation from us that a customer has entered a pre-approval we can start debiting them automatically on the invoice due date!